Francis Berry:

An Inventory of His Papers at the Harry Ransom Center

Poet and professor of
literature Francis Berry published a large number of poetry collections as well
as a respectable amount of literary criticism. The papers document Berry's
development as a poet from his earliest poetic endeavors to his mature
creations, as well as the evolution of his critical ideas.

Francis Berry, poet and professor of literature, was born March 23,
1915, in Ipoh, Malaya. He graduated with a B.A. from the University of London
in 1947; upon completion of his undergraduate studies, Berry obtained a
lectureship in English at the University of Sheffield and was promoted to a
professorship by 1960, the year he received his M.A. from the University of
Exeter. From 1970 to 1980, he taught at Royal Holloway College of the
University of London from which he retired professor emeritus. Various visiting
professorships took him to Carleton College in Minnesota, to the University of
the West Indies in Jamaica, to India and to Japan as a British Council
Lecturer, to the University of Glasgow, to the Australian National University
in Canberra, and to the University of Malawi. He was elected Fellow of the
Royal Society of Literature in 1968.

Francis Berry's poetic works include
Gospel of Fire (1933),
Snake in the Moon (1936),
The Iron Christ (1938),
Fall of a Tower and Other Poems (1943),
Murdock and Other Poems (1947),
The Galloping Centaur (1952),
Morant Bay and Other Poems (1961),
Ghosts of Greenland (1966), and
From the Red Fort (1984). Berry has also
written radio plays such as
Illnesses and Ghosts at the West
Settlement (1965),
The Sirens (1966),
The Near Singing Dome (1971; revised as
The Singing Dome, published 1984), and
Eyre Remembers (1982), and has published one
novel,
I Tell of Greenland (1977). His
Collected Poems was published in 1994.

Berry's critical works include
Herbert Read (1953; revised 1961),
Poets' Grammar: Person, Time and Mood in
Poetry (1958),
Poetry and the Physical Voice (1962), and
The Shakespeare Inset: Word and Picture (1965; revised 1971). Two of his lectures,
John Masefield: The Narrative Poet (1968)
and
Thoughts on Poetic Time (1972), have also
been published. He edited issue 22 of
Essays and Studies in 1969 and contributed
essays and reviews to various publications throughout his career.

The papers of Francis Berry, circa 1928-1961, document Berry's development
as a poet from his earliest poetic endeavors to his mature creations and also
document his concerns as a critic of poetry. The papers are divided into two
series: Poetry and Drama, circa 1928-circa 1957; and Critical Works, circa 1953-1961.
The Poetry series consists of manuscripts of Berry's poetry and verse drama,
including some unpublished work, arranged alphabetically by title. There are
holograph and typed drafts of published poems, most signed and some dated by
the author, from
Snake in the Moon, Fall of a Tower, The Galloping
Centaur, and
Morant Bay and Other Poems as well as
fragments of
The Iron Christ. Berry's unpublished poems
are also well represented. There are proof copies of
Snake in the Moon and
Murdock and Other Poems. Berry's published
and unpublished verse drama is represented by the following works:
Beauty and the Beast,
Conversation Piece,
The Death of Beowulf,
Hans and Gretchen,
The Harpies, and
The Sleeping Beauty.

Also included in this series is correspondence consisting of three
letters of reference for Berry and two letters from Berry to G. Wilson
Knight.

The Critical Works series consists of manuscripts of Berry's critical
assessments of specific writers and technical studies of the mechanics of
poetic creation. There are holograph and typed notes and drafts of most of
Berry's major academic work, including
Herbert Read,
Poetry and the Physical Voice,
Poets' Grammar: Person, Time and Mood in
Poetry, and
Shelley and the Future Tense, an article
published in
Orpheus. This series is also arranged
alphabetically by title.

Access

Open for research. Part or all of this collection is housed off-site
and may require up to three business days notice for access in the
Ransom Center's Reading and Viewing Room. Please contact the
Center before requesting this material: reference@hrc.utexas.edu